AN: And here we are at the beginning again. This story has been a long time in the making. I started writing it maybe a year ago? A year and a half? It's been a while, and I'm posting the first chapter here, with only two or three more chapters left that I have to write. There will probably be around 20 chapters when it's all said and done.

I really like this story and I hope that you do too!

Lily hadn't expected to pack up her things and move back home after she graduated from university.

She thought for sure she would be a part of the group of people who had all their shit together, all their ducks in a row, all the job offers rolling in even before their diploma was in hand.

She'd get a fancy grown up job and never have to worry about waiting tables or fitting into her childhood bed again.

But she didn't fall into that group of people. Despite always being one of the 'smart kids' growing up, being put in advanced classes, acing all her college courses, taking the right internships, and spending her last year in school networking, she graduated feeling below average. Her lease ended, and she hadn't secured a job, so it was back home to Cokeworth.

And when she sat down on her childhood bed, in a room that was the same bright shade of yellow it had been when she'd picked it out at age eight, staring a poster of NSYNC, she felt a bit like a failure.

Her mum was nothing but supportive of course.

Her sister was a complete nightmare, of course.

And she didn't know what to do with herself.

She looked over and saw the tower of boxes in front of her closet, and the other tower of boxes by her bookshelf. She sighed and stood up, pausing to open the window before throwing her hair in a quick plait and getting to work.

There was no need to pretend that this was going to be a short kind of temporary, so she might as well get comfortable.

She turned on some music that matched the nostalgia in the air, and then started emptying one of the boxes into her dresser drawer.

It wasn't long until she was singing along to a Spice Girls' song, her hair now being held up by a scrunchy she had found wrapped around her bedpost, and her lips were a bright red from an old lipstick that had been tucked away in her sock drawer. The boxes, momentarily forgotten and she attempted to hit a high note.

"Evans?" Lily froze, mid-dance move, her hand still balled into a fist and in the air. She knew that voice. She hadn't heard that voice in a very long time, but she knew that voice.

That was the voice of James Potter. The neighbor boy who had grown up on the other side of her bedroom window. A boy who seemed completely perfect to the world.

He had always been a bit of a rival for her while they were growing up, even when they were friends, and they had not been friends for long unless you added up all the times in between when they were not friends and counted when they were young children. But even when they were friends, they had competed for the higher test scores and the most impressive essays.

James had good looks, good grades, rich parents, a loyal group of friends, and last Lily heard, his dream job.

He was the very last person that she wanted to talk to right now.

She turned around to face the window and sighed. "Potter," She called back as she took a few steps closer to the window. She'd already humiliated herself, so there was no need to pretend that she didn't currently look as though she belonged in a nineties hair band. "What are you doing here? Last I heard, you'd been signed to the league of your choosing."

He had one of his elbows leaning against the frame of the window and he was smiling, one of those slightly crooked smiles that had caused all the girls in her year to blush when they found out that her bedroom window was directly across from his. It was the kind of smile that had made Lily blush whenever James had deigned to aim it in her direction.

But that was a long time ago and she wasn't blushing now.

"The league of my choice, eh? That sounds mighty impressive, but that's also not how it works." Two sentences in and he was already correcting her about something that she'd meant to be a joke.

"I know that." She said, pulling the scrunchy out of her hair and leaning out the window herself. "I guess I'm not funny when I'm trying to hide the fact that I'm embarrassed about finding I had an audience to my one-woman hairband rehearsal."

"A one-woman band? I've been watching you rehearse for most of my life, so you just let me know when you start touring and I'll be sure to get myself front row tickets."

"You're not going to tell me that one person can't constitute a whole band?" She asked, raising a brow.

"No, I heard it." He ran a hand through his hair and then smiled at her again. "Am I allowed to tell you that you have lipstick on your teeth though?"

Lily rolled her eyes. "Of course, I do." She wiped her tongue over her teeth. "This lipstick is older than that song I was just singing… or almost as old." She felt the need to correct her own hyperbole now, just in case he thought she wasn't joking. "You never answered my question though. What are you doing here?"

He shifted from one foot to the other, she could tell by the slight bob of his head. "Training starts in two weeks, figured I camp out with my parents until then. What are you doing back?"

Lily bit the tip of her tongue and wondered for a moment if she should lie.

"Looking for a job, I suppose." She shrugged.

James nodded and didn't say anything else on the subject. She didn't know if that was supposed to make her feel better or worse. "We should grab dinner while I'm here." He said, and she knew that he didn't mean it to sound like bragging, but it did. While I'm here.

"Oh yeah, just like old times." She laughed, trying to keep her bitter thoughts out of her voice as she reminded herself that she wasn't stuck here per say, just in limbo. It was completely different.

James shrugged. "Just to catch up." His hand was in his hair again. She'd almost forgotten that particular quirk of his. "Or lunch if you'd rather?"

"Is lunch generally more convenient for people?"

"It's generally less date-like. If that was your hold back."

Lily snorted, "Were you asking me on a date?"

He hesitated for only a second. "Nah, Evans. I think I learned my lesson the first time."

"You've never asked me out before." She cocked her head to the side. There had been one time in secondary where he had pretended to ask her out in order to embarrass her, she assumed because someone had let him know that she fancied him. And then he went and said things like that, so Lily had to keep pretending that the entire thing had never happened, while also staring him down. It'd been almost five years, why did he have to go and bring it up again?

"Right." He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, his ears remaining their normal color much to Lily's disappointment. "Well, I was just asking to catch up. You can just say no if you want to."

"Do you want me to say no?" She asked, slipping the scrunchy onto her wrist and then pulling at it.

"Don't normally ask people to do things hoping they'll say no." He shrugged, and she wished that their houses were just a meter or two closer, so she could read the look on his face better.

"I'd like to catch up," She said honestly, even if she also sort of dreaded the idea. There was something daunting about catching up with people who were currently ahead of you in the game of life, even if she kept repeating to herself that it wasn't a contest and that just because she had graduated without a job didn't mean that she had failed at something. Lots of people graduated without jobs, she was going to be fine.

She would just have less to tell James about. Though she was sure that he would be able to make up for her lack of information with all his amazing football stories. And all the antics he'd been getting up to with Sirius. And Remus. And Peter.

Lily never understood how a group of boys who were so different could stay friends for so long. She admired it though. She didn't have the same group of friends that she started with when she was five. Though she did have Mary, who she'd met when she was twelve and she didn't think she'd trade Mary for the world.

"Yeah?" He asked, looking surprised. "So, we'll do lunch? Is tomorrow too soon?"

"Nah, that should work." Lily said, surprised that James had tomorrow open.

"Alright, I'm going to send you my number really quick." And before Lily could ask him what he meant, he'd dashed away from the window.

He reappeared a moment later with a paper airplane. He made to throw it and Lily stepped aside as the plane flew into her room. She watched it land on the floor near her dresser and then stepped back in front of her window. "What do I need your number for? You're less than four meters from me."

"It's more convenient." He grinned. "I've also wanted to try that for years."

"Better than rocks." She shrugged.

"I was a stupid child."

"So was Sirius."

"One of us still is." James said in mock seriousness. Lily laughed and shook her head.

"Alright, well I should get back to unpacking before I maim myself tripping over one of these boxes."

"Wouldn't want that," James was smiling now. "I should get downstairs. I told my parents I was just running up here to grab my phone. They're going to think I got lost or something."

Lily looked toward the back of James' house and could see the side of a table sticking out on the back patio. Mr. and Mrs. Potter were both sitting around the side of the table that she could see, leaning back in their chairs, most likely trying to act inconspicuous in their attempts at eavesdropping.

"Nah," Lily looked back at James, "I'm sure they know you were distracted by a pretty girl."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Hey Mr. and Mrs. Potter!" Lily called out, causing both of them to jump slightly before they turned around and came into full view, waving up at her.

"Hello, dear!" Mia called up. "It's so good to see you!"

"You as well." Lily looked back at James, who had his head in his hands.

"I forgot they were going out to the patio."

"Was that their original plan?"

"Yeah, though you shouldn't be able to see the table from your window."

"No?"

"Well, I can't see your window from the table, so no."

"Strange thing for you to know off the top of your head."

"Is it?"

"I think so." She nodded. "But your parents are spies, so maybe remembering small details just runs in the family."

James laughed and shook his head again. "Perhaps. Alright, I'll talk to you later. I've got to go and reprimand my parents."

Lily laughed, thinking that it must have always gone that way. They didn't seem the type of parents to reprimand their son all that often, if at all. They were both rather eccentric, but truly kind people. Mia, whose full name was Euphemia Evangeline Dearborn Potter, used to invite her over for tea quite often. Lily had no proof, but she was quite certain that Mia was distantly related to the queen and had left a life of privilege and wealth to marry her husband, a man with an even stranger name of Fleamont Fitzgerald Potter. Monty for short, Fitz for fun.

Though Monty ended up inventing some kind of haircare serum shortly after the couple was wed, and they had been wealthy on their own since then. The kind of wealth that you wouldn't have thought possible when you heard that it came from a single hair product.

And they lived next door to Lily and her completely normal family.

Lily's father had been a doctor, her mother a teacher, her sister married and well on her way to the national 2.5 kids and a white picket fence.

Lily had always thought it odd that they chose to live in the suburbs when they could have lived anywhere, but Lily often found herself wondering over several choices that the Potter's made.

Kind people, if a bit strange.

James was a bit different. He was still strange, but not as kind. At least he hadn't been while they were growing up.

The two of them had been friends on and off for years, but it seems like they always found something to argue and fight about before the friendship could solidify. Of course, they still lived next door to one another for their entire lives. With windows facing each other's bedrooms, so they were privy to the on goings of one another's lives.

James had witnessed when Jonah Chesterfield had stood up a thirteen-year-old Lily, which had embarrassingly brought her to tears within view of his window.

Lily had witnessed when Camilla Hargrove broke up with a fifteen-year-old James, which James had tried to keep her from hearing by closing the window, but Camilla was loud, and Lily had wanted to hear.

Both incidents, and countless others, had ended with James and Lily lying on their respective rooftops and doing their best to comfort the other. Jonah is a hag anyway. No one named Jonah is a nice bloke. Or Camilla shouldn't have said any of that. Besides, she kind of looks like a mouse, don't you think?

But they would act like it had never happened come morning while they walked to the bus stop, together only because they were going to the same place, from nearly the same place.

But they were going to get lunch tomorrow, and Lily had a paper airplane with James' phone number on it somewhere on her bedroom floor.

She scrunched up her nose and then bent over to pick it up from where it had landed, nose under the dresser.

She quickly input the number into her phone and texted him, 'It's Lily Evans.'

And then she turned her attention back to her room and all the boxes that needed to be unpacked.

She wasn't expecting him to respond, but her phone went off a minute later, easily distracting her because unpacking was the very last thing she wanted to do.

James: Evans, I don't think both names were necessary, but thanks.

Lily: I don't know how many paper airplanes you've thrown today, just wanted to avoid any confusion.

James: Ahhhh, I understand. I appreciate it. I do throw a lot of paper airplanes into girl's bedroom windows. There are so many to choose from while standing at my own window.

Lily: See? You're welcome.

James: Thank you, Lily Evans.

Lily bit her lip, to stop herself from smiling or because she wasn't sure why she was texting James like they were friends, she wasn't sure. Then she looked over her shoulder toward James' room, just to make sure that he wasn't over there.

She clicked off the screen and forced her attention back to her boxes. And she didn't pick it up again until all (most) of them were empty and put away.